Utla

Re "Wake-Up Call for LAUSD," June 8: Every morning, nearly 45,000 teachers take their places at the head of Los Angeles classrooms. We do not need wake-up calls or ice water in the face to know the system is facing an unprecedented crisis, and United Teachers-Los Angeles is hardly in a "delusional trance," concerned only with salaries and the right to pick classroom assignments. For nearly two years, UTLA members have done everything possible to end business as usual at LAUSD. Our biggest victory for students and taxpayers as well as teachers was a contract raising salaries from the bottom to the middle of the pack.

Los Angeles teachers' union president Warren Fletcher said he will no longer actively campaign for reelection, clearing the path for challenger Alex Caputo-Pearl to become the next leader of United Teachers Los Angeles. In the first round of voting in March, Caputo-Pearl received 48% of the votes and Fletcher 21%. The runoff election takes place this month with ballots set to be counted April 29. In an interview Sunday, Fletcher said he has not formally suspended his campaign, and that he would serve again if he won. But the one-term incumbent emphasized that he has accepted the near inevitable.

In your article, "LAUSD Strikes Back, Makes Notes of Teacher's Time Off" (Aug. 18), the district tried to pretend that the released-time, teacher officers of UTLA are part of the "vacationgate" scandal plaguing LAUSD. We expect the district to mislead in an attempt to damage the public image of teachers. Not only is the district's claim that the UTLA officers have weeks of "banked vacation" and illness time wrong, it also mixes apples and oranges. The UTLA officers do not receive either vacation or illness time from the LAUSD.

The contest to head the nation's second-largest teachers union will go to a second round, pitting challenger Alex Caputo-Pearl against incumbent Warren Fletcher, who finished a distant second in the initial race, according to results released Thursday. Caputo-Pearl, 45, received 48% of the votes and Fletcher 21%. In the vote-by-mail election, 7,158 members of United Teachers Los Angeles returned ballots, about 23% of those eligible to vote. Fewer than one in four voters supported the one-term incumbent.

Play somewhere else Re "Looking for that common ground," Feb. 21 Everyone has the right to visit our public lands, but no one has the right to abuse them. This includes Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who last weekend traveled to Algodones Dunes to try his hand at driving a dune buggy designed to roar over sand dunes at breakneck speeds. The Algodones Dunes area used to be home to a variety of rare species. It is also considered to be one of the most dangerous off-road areas in the nation, with numerous deaths and injuries that result from out-of-control driving.

Taught a lesson Re "Teachers' choice," Opinion, March 13 I am a newly unemployed L.A. Unified teacher. United Teachers Los Angeles President A.J. Duffy certainly does not speak for me! Duffy and the leadership of UTLA sold out me and many others by refusing to negotiate furlough days instead of teacher cuts. UTLA refused to show solidarity with its newest teachers. So much for "we are all in this together." Duffy and UTLA are all talk. Unemployed teachers and families like mine are suffering because UTLA was unwilling to stand up for its newest teachers.

Authorities Thursday identified a body found on the coast near Montecito as that of a kayaker missing since Jan. 25. With a friend, Daniel Zembrosky, 24, of Santa Ana tried to swim ashore from a capsized kayak, according to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's office. The friend made it to land and called for help from his father's home nearby. Rescue personnel searched futilely for two days but did not recover Zembrosky's body until it was spotted in the ocean Wednesday.

In Pittsburgh, according to an Aspen Institute report, the local teachers union and the school district have gone from "sitting across the table and seeing the other as a problem to sitting on the same side working together to solve problems they both identified as critical. " In Florida's Hillsborough County, the teachers union worked with district administrators on reforms that have included a longer school day, merit-based pay and an evaluation system for teachers that takes student test scores into account.

The leadership of the Los Angeles teachers union is roiled over whether its officials made a private deal with a Board of Education candidate whom critics view as an ally of anti-labor forces. The dispute centers on an alleged understanding worked out between candidate Antonio Sanchez and Gregg Solkovits, a union vice president. According to people with knowledge of the matter, Solkovits has said that Sanchez, if he wins, would let United Teachers Los Angeles choose his chief of staff.

The contest to head the nation's second-largest teachers union will go to a second round, pitting challenger Alex Caputo-Pearl against incumbent Warren Fletcher, who finished a distant second in the initial race, according to results released Thursday. Caputo-Pearl, 45, received 48% of the votes and Fletcher 21%. In the vote-by-mail election, 7,158 members of United Teachers Los Angeles returned ballots, about 23% of those eligible to vote. Fewer than one in four voters supported the one-term incumbent.

One candidate to head the Los Angeles teachers union was laid off. Another was removed from the classroom for alleged misconduct. A third lost his position when his school was restructured with new staff because of low test scores. A fourth is an elementary school counselor who must shuttle between two campuses. Ten candidates are vying to be the next president of United Teachers-Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest teachers union. Their misfortunes run the gamut of what can go wrong for teachers, especially in recent times.

The Los Angeles teachers union must combat public perceptions that it protects bad teachers and should help them improve with better training, a city school board member told union activists in a wide-ranging speech Sunday. Monica Ratliff, a fifth-grade teacher who pulled off an upset win in May for the Los Angeles Board of Education, told more than 400 leaders of United Teachers Los Angeles that the public likes teachers but distrusts labor unions. "People have a fair amount of affection for teachers," said Ratliff, who drew a standing ovation of cheers and chants.

The performance ratings of individual teachers in the city school district are matters of keen public interest and should be released to the Los Angeles Times, a judge ordered Thursday. L.A. County Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant ruled that the public interest in access to the ratings outweighed any teacher expectations of privacy under the California Public Records Act. He rejected arguments by the Los Angeles Unified School District and United Teachers Los Angeles that the records were confidential personnel information that, if released, would create discord, stigma, embarrassment, difficulty in recruiting teachers and other harm.

Three community groups and a Board of Education member have come to the defense of L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy after the teachers union released a member survey giving him low marks. The groups said the Los Angeles Unified School District has made significant progress for students under Deasy, who took the helm in early 2011. They noted a rising graduation rate, more students in Advanced Placement classes and taking AP tests, and plans to equip every student iwth an iPad tablet computer.

July 11, 2013 | By Howard Blume, This post has been corrected. See note at the bottom for details.

The L.A. teachers union pressed its campaign of criticism against L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy Thursday with the release of a survey in which 85% of those who responded rated him below average or poor. The superintendent scored poorly on every one of 25 questions, which, taken together, were a read on the morale of teachers who participated. About 26% of union members returned the survey, according to United Teachers Los Angeles. "We're constantly being told you have to do better, you have to do better, the data is showing you're not doing job. It's frustrating.

The leadership of the Los Angeles teachers union recently conducted a survey among its members asking if they had confidence in Los Angeles Unified Supt. John Deasy. Although it was highly unusual for the union to mount this kind of frontal attack on the superintendent, the maneuver wouldn't have raised eyebrows had it not been for the union's full-court press to influence the vote. Not only did the union send out misleading information about Deasy's record, it also posted unflattering, juvenile caricatures of him on its website.

The Los Angeles teachers union must combat public perceptions that it protects bad teachers and should help them improve with better training, a city school board member told union activists in a wide-ranging speech Sunday. Monica Ratliff, a fifth-grade teacher who pulled off an upset win in May for the Los Angeles Board of Education, told more than 400 leaders of United Teachers Los Angeles that the public likes teachers but distrusts labor unions. "People have a fair amount of affection for teachers," said Ratliff, who drew a standing ovation of cheers and chants.

It's easy to see why United Teachers Los Angeles doesn't like the new Public School Choice policy at L.A. Unified, which allows outside groups to apply to take over about 250 new or underperforming schools. Those groups are likely to include a large number of charter school operators that would hire their own teachers rather than sign a contract with the teachers union. What's less understandable is why UTLA would minimize its chances of keeping some of the schools within the district, along with their union jobs.

The leadership of the Los Angeles teachers union is roiled over whether its officials made a private deal with a Board of Education candidate whom critics view as an ally of anti-labor forces. The dispute centers on an alleged understanding worked out between candidate Antonio Sanchez and Gregg Solkovits, a union vice president. According to people with knowledge of the matter, Solkovits has said that Sanchez, if he wins, would let United Teachers Los Angeles choose his chief of staff.

Los Angeles teachers overwhelmingly expressed "no confidence" in L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy in the first vote of its kind in the nation's second-largest school system. In the weeklong referendum that ended Wednesday, 91% of the participating teachers expressed disapproval of Deasy, with about 17,700 of the union's more than 32,000 members casting ballots, the teachers union announced Thursday. The superintendent called the vote "nonsense" even before knowing its outcome, and a group of civic leaders rallied to Deasy's defense.